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YouTube No Translation

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Re: YouTube No Translation

#11

Post by chii »

Version467 wrote: post #5
CivBase wrote: post #2

I didn't know video translations were a thing. Is this not configurable?

Surprisingly, it isn't. You can change the language in your google account and it will take that into account for what to translate and into what language, but you can't turn it off completely. I don't know who thought this was a good user experience, because it's one of the most frustrating features I've ever had to deal with. I'm german, but almost all of the things I watch are in english. So usually I will just ig…

> I don't know who thought this was a good user experience

the product manager(s) and the team who needed to show impact in their performance reviews.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#12

Post by miggol »

I have been using an untranslate add-on like this one and have been absolutely loving it. Since YouTube has been AI translating video titles and dubbing contents it has been suggesting foreign videos in users' home feed.

The way these untranslate add-ons work (layman's explanation) is that they fetch the original title and audio and reinsert it, but the recommendation for the video stays in your feed. This has resulted in loads of super interesting foreign language content in my feed which is just awesome.

Cars are one of my YouTube interests and seeing loads of cool old car content from different parts of the world has been fascinating. Not only were different models popular in different places but the things people value in a car are also wildly different across the globe. And I get to listen to a cool foreign language while discovering this!

One downside is that to the YouTube algorithm, it probably seems like I absolutely LOVE this autodubbing feature, going crazy for all these translated videos. That could not be further from the truth: my youtube feed has become completely unusable without an untranslate add-on since this update.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#13

Post by rtsil »

Version467 wrote: post #5
CivBase wrote: post #2

I didn't know video translations were a thing. Is this not configurable?

Surprisingly, it isn't. You can change the language in your google account and it will take that into account for what to translate and into what language, but you can't turn it off completely. I don't know who thought this was a good user experience, because it's one of the most frustrating features I've ever had to deal with. I'm german, but almost all of the things I watch are in english. So usually I will just ig…

I'm in France, but my Google, browsers and devices languages are English. So Youtube randomly auto-dubs (and auto-translates the title of) some French videos into English, and some English videos into French. But they're never the same videos depending on the devices or the browsers. However, the automatic subtitles during the preview remain in the original langage.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#14

Post by torlok »

CivBase wrote: post #2

I didn't know video translations were a thing. Is this not configurable?

As a polish YouTube user who wants to watch content in both languages, it's an infuriating no. YouTube started translating titles recently for me, and the translations are pure nonsense. I'm not exaggerating, it's dumb word for word translation with no context. I have to reverse engineer titles now. Even more recently they turned audio translation on too with the most ear piercing voice possible, but that can be turned off. Title translation can't be turned off.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#15

Post by silvestrov »

Version467 wrote: post #5
CivBase wrote: post #2

I didn't know video translations were a thing. Is this not configurable?

Surprisingly, it isn't. You can change the language in your google account and it will take that into account for what to translate and into what language, but you can't turn it off completely. I don't know who thought this was a good user experience, because it's one of the most frustrating features I've ever had to deal with. I'm german, but almost all of the things I watch are in english. So usually I will just ig…

> thought-process that lead to this decision

highly likely to be monolingual people as they cannot understand you would like movies to be in any other language than your mother tongue.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#16

Post by troupo »

silvestrov wrote: post #15
Version467 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, it isn't. You can change the language in your google account and it will take that into account for what to translate and into what language, but you can't turn it off completely. I don't know who thought this was a good user experience, because it's one of the most frustrating features I've ever had to deal with. I'm german, but almost all of the things I watch are in english. So usually I will just ig…

> thought-process that lead to this decision highly likely to be monolingual people as they cannot understand you would like movies to be in any other language than your mother tongue.

> highly likely to be monolingual people

Which is insane to me. Silicon Valley is filled to the brim with multi-lingual people. And yet so many decisions that are coming out have no understanding of languages

Re: YouTube No Translation

#17

Post by troupo »

Version467 wrote: post #5
CivBase wrote: post #2

I didn't know video translations were a thing. Is this not configurable?

Surprisingly, it isn't. You can change the language in your google account and it will take that into account for what to translate and into what language, but you can't turn it off completely. I don't know who thought this was a good user experience, because it's one of the most frustrating features I've ever had to deal with. I'm german, but almost all of the things I watch are in english. So usually I will just ig…

> I don't know who thought this was a good user experience

Which youtube decision of recent years ever thought about user experience?

It's all "company bets" and "promotion tracks".

When it was a fight against TikTok you got Shorts that you can't get rid of.

Now you probably have to "show commitment to our AI offerings" or something. So you get autotranslated videos by a team which will get 500k bonuses and will move on in a month

Re: YouTube No Translation

#19

Post by rickcarlino »

Unbelievable that YouTube has not made this feature configurable. I am a language learner and use YouTube to find target language content. It’s very difficult now because you can no longer trust the title of the video to tell you what language it was intended for. Would have been very simple to add a settings toggle. This is one of the worst app inconveniences I’ve come across in recent years.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#20

Post by rjsw »

sigio wrote: post #6
Zealotux wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently not, or the setting is not easily accessible, and it baffles me it's the case and someone at YouTube probably is proud of it on top of getting their promotion for such a terrible feature.

On desktop you can at least change it at runtime (like auto-dubbing), but on mobile they have made this completely impossible. I keep running into (originally) german video's that have been auto-translated to english for me, which I really dislike, since I can perfectly understand german. There's no way to disable this and just get subs only (which can be toggled on/off)

I thought that yt-dlp uses the mobile interface, it shows the different language options and identifies the original one, the official mobile player must be making the choice of which one to use.
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